http://youtu.be/vvyBMKqWHLk

A little video I did demonstrating just how terrible the Toyota in car software system thingy is.


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That does indeed seem to be a bit of an oversight. The trip computer stuff isn't accessed by something on or near the steering wheel is it?

No. The steering wheel controls only change the volume or track/station.


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To be fair, I've never seen ANY in car system I would (as a former UI designer) be happy to foist upon the public. They are uniformly terrible, and always seem to be a design from (current year - 10). BMW's isn't too bad, but they don't seem to have considered the notion that in a moving vehicle showing as much information as possible on each screen isn't necessarily the best policy. Never seen the UI on a Ferrari, Aston or Maybach mind . I think the Tesla interface is about the best I've seen.

The reviews of CarPlay I've seem don't seem to be much better either, although Android Auto doesn't seem too bad. So it's not just auto makers that can't do it, it seems even people who make UIs every day have issues.

I also dislike touch screens in cars TBH. You HAVE to look at a touch screen to operate it, which in a car at speed is A Bad Thing. I've seen some patents for touch screens that can provide three dimensional haptic feedback so you can feel the controls as you run your finger across them. I'd very much prefer those to start getting put in cars ASAP, or at least voice controls to start working in any way properly.

What happens if you press the physical menu button (the lower of the two to the right of the screen)?

You are the first person I know to call it a menu button. It has no label or anything.

But yes, a tweet from Toyota told me that was a menu button.

I have yet to confirm. All that does is raise the question, "why the hell is it not labelled 'Menu'?"?!?


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It's a test to see if you've read the instruction manual

But yes, if it's a menu button a label of some sort would be a good idea.

My tweet back to Toyota...

@ToyotaGB if software needs an instruction manual, it’s broken. As someone who makes apps it’s the first thing I learned.



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Now I'm curious, what did you think the button did?
Had you tried pressing it?

I didn't even know it was a button. I've turned it once by accident and realised that it changed the track/station and never used it again as I have the steering wheel controls for that.


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Doesn’t look good if it relies on a connected phone to navigate the system.

VW’s offering (certainly the one in my wife’s Skoda Yeti) seems to be pretty well organised, though it seems like any other touch screen, to be better operated by either someone in the passenger seat or when the car is not moving. There are a number of controls passed through to the steering wheel, but some (especially those that require “fiddle factor” such as settings) are disabled when the car is moving.


This, however, really, really annoys me. The VW head unit does the same. The on/off symbol ROTATES as you turn the volume knob. Why? That on/off symbol really needs to remain vertical, but it doesn’t. Also, in the Skoda, the controller is stepped (and I expect it’s an artificial stepping) so you can feel that it’s turning, and there is NO WAY you can get the on/off symbol to be completely vertical because the stepping is not aligned to allow it to be.

AFAIK the home button on the iPhone also isn't labelled, yet it performs the same task...

True, but it is pretty obvious and very different from the ones on the side. You should see my new work phone, Nokia 950. The only physical interface is three identical buttons on the side, none of them labelled or marked in any way. Whose bloody brilliant idea was that?

Edit - now I come to think of it, before they introduced the fingerprint sensor, the iPhone home button WAS marked. It had a square on it. Good luck figuring out what that meant without pressing it mind.

I've got a Lumia 950XL and it has <shock horror> 4 unlabelled buttons down the side (the additional one over the 950 is the camera button). Given how narrow they are I'm not entirely convinced you could label them with anything big enough to be visible/legible without holding the phone close to your eyes anyway.
I get the distinct impression the expectation now is that people will just prod things to see what happens and so pick things up like that. Not saying that's a good thing right enough.

The main trouble I have with car infotainment systems is that, because the car is right-hand drive, they're all left-handed. Take the jogwheel/touchpad combo you see in various German saloons: it's great in LHD cars but bloody useless over here. I mount my phone/satnav on my drivers-side window so that I can use it